Goddammit, why can't I just retire right now? Yukari wondered despondently, leaning on her desk and struggling through a hangover to remain awake. What do all these brats need to learn English for anyway? She should really stop going on those late-night drinking sprees with Nyamo; getting drunk always brought on such bouts of existential angst. That damn woman's corrupting me! I should ditch her and find a man who…
"Um… sensei? I'm done. May I sit down?" Young Ozaki had been reciting to the class and now stood awkwardly next to her desk, waiting to be released. Some dim teacherly instinct in the depths of Yukari's soul reminded her to congratulate him on a job well done, but her head hurt too much to bother.
"Sure, whatever." Yukari waved vaguely at the classroom. "Next!"
"She sure seems a lot less chipper today," a girl in the back commented softly.
"Probably hung over again," another replied cynically.
Yukari slammed her hand down on the desk and stood, wincing at the pitch of her own voice. "All right, who said that?"
"Uh…" The two students looked around frantically then pointed at each other. "She-!"
"Your attention, please," the PA said nasally. Ever since their old principal had retired, this new guy had come… he was a real jerk and a stickler for punctuality, which were pretty much the same thing in Yukari's book. However, what he had to say just now was music to her ears. "Please come down to the parking lot to, er, collect your paychecks." A nervous cough. "And bring your students."
"All right!" Yukari chirped. "That's more like it! But I wonder why I have to bring you guys…?"
"Er, Ms. Yukari?" Michiko Kimura (yes, that Kimura) ventured diffidently. She was a straight-A student who breezed through any academic challenge without any apparent effort. "I think it might be a code phrase."
Lousy little know-it-all brat, Yukari thought without any real venom. She's just like that one kid with the orange hair! "Code phrase, eh?" She espied her best friend from the corner of her eye, passing her room with a bewildered class in tow. "Yo, Nyamo! What's the code-phrase for?"
Kurosawa cast her an aggrieved glance. Clearly it was something she was supposed to already know. The gym teacher crossed to her quickly and whispered in her ear for a few seconds, slowly rising in volume until the front row of students could very clearly hear "—Godzilla, you idiot!" at the end.
"Oh, okay," Yukari said calmly. "I can take it from here." Kurosawa looked like she very much doubted that, but left to see to her own class. Once she was gone, the English teacher turned back to her pupils, the very picture of serenity. "A hundred-meter-tall radioactive dinosaur is coming right for us. I'm sure you all know what to do."
"We do?" Michiko asked.
"Run for the hills and have a nice life," Yukari said sunnily, "'Cause I've just retired!"
Zoom!
"Wow…" Ozaki commented inanely as the papers settled in Yukari's wake. "I've never seen anybody in heels run like that."
Space Godzilla was, of course, on hand to protect Tokyo. He met his Earthling counterpart in an evacuated suburb, kilometers from the downtown to which he was mysteriously drawn. In ages past, the Monster King might have paused to size up his larger foe, but now he just wasn't in the mood. As soon as the space monster's feet touched ground, a vicious blue beam was lashing towards his face. It was countered by SG's own blue-red-gold deathray, and when they struck…
Nobody ever saw it directly because the burst of light momentarily overloaded every camera that was trained on it, though evacuees received a polite reminder to hurry the hell up in the form of a multicolored mushroom-cloud rising over the skyline.
The pay-per-view people had finally gotten their act together, but were swiftly finding that not many viewers were ghoulish enough to enjoy the spectacle of the homes and livelihoods of hundreds of real people getting flattened by a duel of reptilian juggernauts. It was a good thing they were there and on the job, though, as this was a battle worth recording.
Both monsters had been knocked into a crouch on opposite sides of a vast, scorched crater. Godzilla straightened and shook his great head groggily, seeming to mutter, Okay, let's not try that again… Space Godzilla rose on the other side and readied himself to attack—then barked in surprise as the smaller beast slammed into him.
It almost looked like a gigantic, ponderous boxing match, the Ultraheavyweight Championship of the world, both beasts weaving and dodging, fighting entirely with their meaty fists and stubby claws. Over the course of their battle, it became clear that Godzilla was actually stronger than his opponent, easily driving Big Blue back towards downtown Tokyo and the mothership above.
Nothing on Earth could stop the King of the Monsters.
High above the Earth, however, a satellite was slowly gathering power. It had been in geosynchronous orbit over Tokyo for over a year now, and those that built it hoped it would remain cold and dormant until the happy day that it was no longer needed and burned out of the sky. But now the mysterious and arcane instruments within it were humming to blasphemous life and horrible energies were twisting beneath its spire as small jets slowly maneuvered it into position.
Soon Japan would feel the wrath of the untested and cataclysmically powerful Dimension Tide!
"I'm sorry," Osamu spread his hands. "I don't know anything about why they'd want to kidnap Ayumu and Xandra. If they just took Ayumu, I'd say it was because of the forged release, or Xandra… um, she was on Earth legally, right?"
"Of course she was on Earth legally, you dolt!" Kaori snapped, wrestling one end of a table into position. "Help me with this!"
"Right…" Osamu took the other end and squared it off. She'd been rearranging the interior of the store when he arrived and hadn't bothered to explain exactly how or why even as she demanded his aid. She was obviously a woman on a mission. "I don't know what to tell you."
"All this conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger stuff is supposed to be your thing!"
"Well I don't think you want a half-baked theory, and I…" Osamu's cell-phone rang. "Hold on a moment." Kaori crossed her arms and tapped her foot angrily. She sure was in a lousy mood… but then, being tasered while your friends are stolen away would have that effect on you, wouldn't it?
The interior of Olhos Do Ceu was mostly empty; the light shelving had been pushed to the walls when he got there and now Kaori had enlisted him to help move the heavier tables into a strange kind of pattern on the broad floor. She must have cleared the tabletops before he arrived as well, though there was a pack of chalk sitting on one of them. He didn't like the look of that one bit.
"What?" Osamu straightened. "You're going to… what? No! Y-you're kidding! You mean… I was right? Yes! Yes, I'll… right away!" He clicked the phone off.
"Who was that?"
"It was my boy at the Pentagon."
"Wh-? You have a boy at the…?"
Osamu put his hands on his hips. "Come on, Kaori! Did ever occur to you… just once did you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that I might occasionally have an idea of what I'm talking about?"
"Uh… no." Kaori looked away. "To be honest, I just called you because I was completely desperate."
He slapped his forehead. "Well, we don't have time for this now. They're… the Americans are going to use Dimension Tide! I—shit, who should I warn? I can't tell the government…"
"Most everyone's evacuating because of Godzilla, anyway."
"But there are people still relying on the old shelters! They'll be killed!" Osamu looked around. "I'm… responsible for…!"
"Calm down." Kaori took his shoulders and looked up at him firmly.
"I… but…!"
"Stop it. Don't waste the time you do have."
Osamu shook his head rapidly. "O-okay. I… I need somebody who's in a position to help them, yet wouldn't necessarily alert, you know, the military guys. Or should I even care about that? I, I mean, those people didn't choose to sacrifice themselves for the cause of getting rid of the Gaijin! But to waste this chance… No… I don't know…" He was almost whimpering by this point.
Kaori tried to keep him thinking. "Who would even believe you?"
"That's another factor. Who do we know that has any clout at all, yet wouldn't just brush me off as a crazy…" Osamu's eyes widened. "Oh."
Kaori caught on instantly. "She'll hate you."
"Yeah, with Tokyo about to be eaten by a friggin' singularity, that's what I'm really worried about," he replied, dialing rapidly.
Meanwhile, in a far-off suburb, untouched by the titanic duel and not threatened by the dread weapon, Kagura slept. Once whole prefectures would be emptied at the mere approach of a kaiju, but after a UFO invasion and the installation of giant monster sentries in every major city, people had had a chance to get used to the idea. Now a reasonably broad area had been cleared out around them while citizens of more distant suburbs and neighboring cities were allowed to go about their lives.
Most of them, anyway.
Ever since she had returned from Shizouka, Kagura had been happily performing her post-Enryu-call ritual: a 12-hour powernap. One really starts to appreciate sleep after one spends a long time in a position where one has to ration it, after all. The sheer, unbelievable luxury of being able to lie down and sleep as long as she wanted was just…
But wait! The most annoying, abominable, detestable sound in the world rang out.
Kagura's hand slid out of under the covers and groped over her end-table until it rested on the telephone. After a pause that probably meant she was considering answering, she jerked the offending device off of the wall and let it clatter across the floor. There! If the call was important, then they'd…
After a few seconds, her cell phone started chirping. Damn it all, it was!
She snapped it open (it was too expensive to chuck anyway) and gave it the most polite answer she could dredge up, which was "What is it?" in an unmistakably whiney tone of voice. "Osamu? You'd better hope this is good or I will break you!" She listened for a few seconds. "Uh huh… Pentagon… superweapon… okay, yeah. Yeah, that's good, you're justified. I'll… yawn… get right on that, Osamu."
If someone were standing four or five feet away from Kagura (considering the circumstances, this would probably be a pretty creepy person), they would clearly have heard the caller yell, "This is not! Just! Osamu being Osamu! This is for REAL!"
"Okay, okay…" Kagura whined, sitting up. "I'm moving. …what? Oh, no, no, I really would have broken you. Yeah… keep that in mind next time I'm on call. Yeah, okay, I'm off to save Tokyo. 'Bye."
Kagura slapped herself a few times, mustering all of her strength and formidable will to start her day 9 hours early. Enryu would have to grind into action yet again, it seemed, scampering around the feet of grappling giants to pry people out of their shelters and save them from… what? Surely this "dimension tide" wasn't as bad as all that?
Well, she had no choice but to believe her friend. Kagura snapped her phone back open and dialed reluctantly. "Hi, chief," she greeted, doing her damnedest to sugar-coat her voice. "Yeah, sorry for waking you up. It's… no, okay… hey… listen to me, will you? Oh, come on, Chief… please, I'm not the devil. Yes, I know you were looking forward to this, I was, too… what? Leave my mother out of this!"
It was going to be a hard sell.
Ayumu and sat with her arm around Xandra's shoulders for what seemed like an eternity, her anger mostly swallowed by worry. Even with Gathra flapping reassuringly on her shoulder and the vile dust at bay, the Xian girl was in a desperate state, trembling, eyes wide and empty.
"You okay?" Ayumu asked softly.
Xandra slowly nodded.
"You know, it kinda looks like snow…" Ayumu mused. "Like…"
"It's a corpse," Xandra interrupted in a brittle voice. "Please, don't."
"Yeah, but he's right here…"
"He is? Where?" Xandra quavered. "I don't see anything, Ayumu! What are you talking about? What's happening to us? Oh, God, oh…!"
"Don't worry, sister, please. We'll be fine."
"No we won't! Don't you get it? It's… you know it's Yukia! She's… she'll kill us!"
"It'll be fine, Xannie."
Xandra blinked and her eyes focused. She almost seemed to forget that she was afraid. "What did I say about calling me Xannie?"
"I don't see a table of tacks anywhere 'round here."
"Here they are," a muffled voice said. "Hey, they don't look that bad."
"Better give 'em the masks anyway," another answered. Two guards in heavy jackets and breathing masks stood outside the force-wall. One tossed a pair of masks through an opening that appeared and irised shut before the too much of the whirling dust could make it through. Ayumu tried to help her sister into one, but neither of them could quite figure out the clasps. Finally, with an exasperated sigh, the guard entered and snapped both into place. "Let's go."
They were led down a long shining corridor lightly frosted with the loathsome Moth powder, passing a force-walled archway which opened into a room that was practically a blizzard of the stuff. Ayumu craned over her shoulder as they passed and saw a worker in a containment suit emerge through the wall and shake himself off. "You guys tryin' to get cancer or what?"
"Shh," her guard said absently, not even noticing her flinch.
"Sure aren't seein' a lot of people," Ayumu commented after a few seconds. Thankfully, instead of shocking her, the guard simply ignored her. They were finally taken through a room where powerful air currents scoured them of Moth and the masks were taken from them. "Why do you think she kept 'em in there, anyway?" Xandra's guard asked, "It was a pain in the ass to improvise that cell."
"Shh," Ayumu's guard said. "Let's just get them to Yukia."
Xandra moaned softly.
"Shh."
"Everybody out!" Masema ordered. "Out, out! You, too! Lords and admirals, clear the command deck!"
"But why? We're still under att-!"
Masema cuffed the objector, knocking him flipping over the map table. "My second's taking care of that! Does anybody want to get blasted? I can do that, too!"
"Wait, you named a second?" Another subcommander yelped. "When did this—ow!"
"Out! Go wait in the hall!"
And after a lot of shouting, shoving and a few barked shins, Masema finally emptied the deck of everybody but himself, Yukia and the prostrate Chiyo. "You didn't have to do that," his new second said mildly. "I can concentrate in whatever circumstances are required. But as long as you're being so accommodating, would you turn down the lights?"
Masema clapped his hands twice and the room became even more appallingly dark. "You know as well as I do that we'd both be done for if they saw what you're really about to do."
"Hunh. So you weren't fooled, after all." Yukia shrugged. "By this point, though, I don't think it matters what they do."
"Well, better to be safe than sorry. What is that circle for?"
"It's forbidden arts stuff; you wouldn't understand. And if you could, I wouldn't give the knowledge away in any case. You've called for the others, then?"
Masema grumbled, eyes panning over the circle and the girl within, then nodded. "Yes. You'll be able to do your thing, and then we will have our weapon with which to destroy the Earthmen."
Yukia looked like she was about to take exception to something he'd said, but then the door opened and a pair of guards shoved Yomi into the room. She stumbled forward and fell to her knees, trailing the bindings from her wrists. "You're sick!" she cried. "How did you know?"
"Know what?" Yukia asked.
"That I'd lost a friend in the--!"
"So that's why you were connected to that spot! I was sure you hadn't been on this ship before."
"Wait, I was connected to that…? Then that means-!"
"Dimension Tide!" A white-coated scientist bustled into the room, waving his arms. "The Earthmen are really doing it! It's powering up as we speak!"
"Dispatch Space Godz… hm." Masema glanced at one of the control table's screens, where Space Godzilla was having his face smashed repeatedly into the ground by the Real McCoy. "Do we have any other monsters that can reach it?"
"Never mind that," Yukia put in. "That is part of my plan. I need the black hole."
"What?" Yomi protested. "You mean all that Dimension Tide stuff is real? They're really going to generate a three solar-mass singularity and fire it into the Earth?"
"Er, yes," the scientist pushed his glasses up on his nose, no doubt wondering who this woman was and what she was doing in the control room.
"But that makes no sense! Forget it! There's no way that can work! Even if they created a black hole and somehow managed to move it, it would destroy the whole Earth!"
"Not so," the scientist countered, "For you see…" and he launched into a long, convoluted explanation that nobody else in the room quite understood.
"But… but… that makes no sense!" Yomi repeated. This defiance of common sense (or rather, what should have been, to a scientist) infuriated her enough that she forgot about being a prisoner. "That breaks… hell, that breaks just about all of the conservation laws! And how do they plan to give momentum to such a huge mass, anyway? And what about time-dilation, huh? That's some screwed up, B-movie science you have going there!"
"Which of us is the physicist here, young lady?" He started to launch into another lecture-- "Out," Masema ordered sharply, itching for his gun, and the scientist fled. "And keep your mouth shut," he added to Yomi. "I can't stand know-it-alls."
"…so d'you guys say 'God's Green Black Hole' then?" Ayumu asked, just before being shoved into the room along with Xandra. "Awp! Hey!"
"Ah, sisters…" Yukia beckoned. "Sit down next to your friend here, and we'll- um?"
Ayumu crossed the room with surprising speed and grabbed her arm. "What d'ya think you're doin'? You coulda killed us!"
"Oh, for pity's sake, it's just a narcotic…"
"We're allergic an' besides which that's the corpse o' my baby you inconsiderate piece a'--!" A red bolt cracked into the deck at Ayumu's feet and she skittered back with a loud squeal. Masema holstered his sidearm and leaned on the viewport. "Why don't you control your prisoners, Yukia?" he asked coldly. "Or should I kill one of them to make the others quiet down?"
"That won't be necessary."
Ayumu backed away meekly and sat on the deck next to Yomi. "We have a thing about bein' held at gunpoint by aliens, don't we?" she whispered. Xandra swatted her half-heartedly but nearly missed; her eyes were riveted on Yukia.
"Chiyo-chan?" Sakaki had finally arrived. Shoving her surprised guard away, she all but flew across the room and knelt at the girl's side. "Chiyo, what did she do to you? Ch-chiyo?"
"Don't break the--!" Yukia threw out a hand, but then let it drop when she saw that it was too late. "…circle." Masema took aim, but sneered and turned away when his second waved him down.
Sakaki didn't need medical training to tell that her friend was in a bad way. Her weak, uneven pulse, shallow, slow breathing and shockingly low temperature were signs that even a child could read. Sakaki took the prodigy into her arms, fighting back tears.
"You needn't bother," the Forbidden Artist said blandly. "That's little more than a breathing corpse, now."
Sakaki looked up, eyes nearly searing a hole through the Gaijin's head. "You--!"
"Don't try. You saw him… you know you can't lay a finger on me. There is nothing you can do, Ms. Sakaki, and soon that will be the fate of all living things." Great semi-visible wings spread above her, and Sakaki realized there really was nothing she could do.
"Earthmen," Masema corrected.
"Huh?" Yukia blinked. "Oh, right. The fate of all Earthmen. Yeah."
"What are you going to do to us?" Yomi asked. In spite of the dreadful blow she'd been dealt earlier, she'd more or less recovered her equilibrium. Not so for Xandra, who seemed to be almost catatonic. Ayumu was doing her best to comfort her without attracting any notice; this had the added bonus of distracting her attention from the hideous astral monster that she could see all too clearly.
"No harm in explaining," Yukia decided. "I've been drawing life from your friend here for a long time now, before we even came to the Earth. Now that I have taken all that she has to give, I will start drawing from the rest of you through her, through the connections that you have formed with her. When the Earthmen finally use Dimension Tide, I will hopefully be strong enough to summon my…" she glanced sideways at Masema. "…ah, weapon."
"So we're all going to…?"
"Yes. You will all die." Yukia smiled thinly as she saw the lines between them sharpen even further, and even the wispy, severed ghosts of Chiyo's lines flailed up around the unbroken silver for a moment. "But it will be for a worthy cause. This world will be extinguished… uh, cleansed for my people, that is. Cleansed."
"Oh, God…" Xandra whimpered.
Yomi's diplomatic training went totally to waste. "You're mad!"
"Am I?" Yukia asked, gazing at her levelly. And meeting her look, Yomi felt a block of ice settle into her stomach. These were not the eyes of a madwoman… this was a rational, intelligent being that had, in sound mind, decided to work towards the destruction of all life on Earth. Nothing she'd ever encountered was more alien and terrible to her, up to and including those arachnid Oxygen Destroyer monsters.
"Well?" Masema gestured impatiently. "Get on with it!"
"Very well. First things first," the Forbidden Artist raised her hand. "The circle is restored, so I will finish the child off and then-"
"No!" Sakaki snapped, clutching Chiyo tighter.
"And what will you do to stop me? There's no way you can shield her, unless…" Yukia suddenly grinned. "Thank you for volunteering to go first."
Sakaki might have made a response, but it was too late. The huge, unreal being behind Yukia lunged and invisible teeth of ice stabbed through Sakaki. She sagged gently over Chiyo, strength failing instantly as her life ebbed slowly away. Yukia drew a deep breath, relishing the feeling of Sakaki draining into her. It wouldn't be long at all, now.
Yomi gritted her teeth and stared down at the decking. There was a way out… there had to be, there always was! But sadly, the great Bespectacled One was drawing a blank. Come on, woman, we're not even bound! We just have to deal with a guy with a gun and whatever that vampire lady has. You've seen worse, so think
More and more, though, Yomi was getting the feeling that if anybody held the key to this predicament it wasn't her. And who on Earth was Ayumu whispering to, anyway?
